A recent article in the New York Times, “From Picassos to Sarcophagi, Guided by iPhone Apps,” addressed the omnipresence of smartphones and the insatiable lust of their users for new and better apps. In this case, the topic is, what apps are useful or could potentially be useful in a museum setting?

Renowned museums like the New York Museum of Modern Art, the American Museum of Natural History and the Brooklyn Museum make use of smartphone apps to better lead their guests through the exhibitions. In general, once the app is downloaded to the mobile device (each family of smartphones require a unique platform specific app) and the user is in the building they can click through information on specific artworks. Some of the electronic information supplements the material available on the wall text, some expand the experience with audio feeds while others offer no more than what is on view in the museum.

Writer Edward Rothstein notes the differences between the more common museum audio tour equipment versus the information available via the smartphone app. In sum, he isn’t overly impressed with the apps but notes there will most definitely be improvements to come, as the programs are still in their infancy.

About the MoMa app he writes, “Moreover, apart from the audio itself, information is slight and availability inconsistent. Search for works by Warhol: some have almost no commentary; others offer excerpts from a book; others link to audio commentary. The app never got easier to use; it remained fussy and interfering. It was a relief to turn it off.”

Overall, the applications are meant to supplement the viewing experience, not detract from it. Even if the first version is a bit tedious, it is no doubt that subsequent versions will become more streamlined as time passes.

I, myself, remember wishing I could lug all of my Contemporary Art History texts into the Centre Pompidou so that I could better show my friend the genesis of video art (which I had studied at university) while we looked at each piece in the exhibition. Instead, I could only suggest some preemptory reading for the train ride, and then had to rely on my own fallible memory once we were inside. I pity anyone who owns a smartphone who dares enter a museum with me now. There is no doubt I would hijack it in the name of on-the-spot research.

Which brings us to an obvious contention that many curators must have with using applications. Curators tend to mount shows in such a way that the artworks conduct a dialogue with each other. The visitors to the show are expected to consider the layout as a whole, and then focus more finely on specific areas. For instance, what does this gallery have in common with other galleries on this floor? What is different? And then, is there a theme to the series of artworks on this wall? Or, why is this specific painting hung above that drawing? The nuances of how a show is hung could easily be lost with most of the audience’s heads bent, looking up the corresponding image on their phones. It is possible that one could miss a larger concept found in the gallery at MoMa while looking up the specifics of Francis Bacon’s biography on Wikipedia.

But, the world is moving on, as they say and we shall move with it. The BRMA has an application available for viewing on our website through a Cooliris feed or through the Cooliris app on an iphone or ipad. It presents images from the permanent collection with their provenance on a 3-D wall. This presentation allows you to either continually scroll laterally through the exhibition or step through it in a traditional slide show format. The Museum’s eGallery makes viewing the works infinitely easier.

We have not yet implemented an application on the scale of the New York museums, but a visitor can use our eGallery while in the museum to identify which artworks they would like to see as well as read wall text that accompanies the pieces. Because Executive Director George Bolge chose the artworks as if he were planning a traditional gallery exhibition a visitor can experience a contextually complete experience from anywhere in the world or use it as a guide while visiting the Museum to find some of its most cherished pieces.

What kinds of applications would you like to see available at the museum?

Saturday, October 16Free screening and discussion in the Museum Auditorium, 2:00 PM

In collaboration with Art21, join us for the preview of the new film, William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible, prior to its public release. The documentary features Kentridge at work in his studio discussing his artistic philosophy and techniques. Viewers are privy to the mindset and creative process of the acclaimed contemporary artist, named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine, whose recurring themes include class struggle, violent oppression and social and political hierarchies.

Following the film, an engaging panel discussion with FAU Assistant Professor of Art History Dr. Karen Leader, FAU Adjunct Professor of Visual Arts Victoria Skinner, and Curator of Education Claire Clum assesses the role of the artist in society and the impact of Kentridge’s work in the art world.

The premise which guided the organization of this exhibition is that naturalism is the first example of the permeation of science into all forms of artistic expression. The narrative of this thesis will be illustrated through the graphic masterpieces of the artists of the time. Therefore, this show begins with the realism and naturalism of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (circa 1720-78) famous for his views of the ruins of Rome and fantastic compositions of building interiors. His formidable artistic skills, bolstered by his architectural training and informed appetite for archeological detail, found full expression in imaginary studies of prisons, ruins, vaults and arcades full of highly contrasting light and dark shadows. Art lovers appreciate his work for its remarkable flights of imagination combined with a strong practical understanding of ancient Roman technology.

These images of half-buried monuments, integrated with churches and street life and picturesque rural incursions, are compelling documents of a great city in an era when the study of antiquity was fueling the contradictory aesthetic revolution of Neoclassicism and Romanticism. However, the positive – and more important – aspect is his commitment to feeling and to his “sovereign right” of expression.

Piranesi learned a great deal from Venetian artists, especially Giovanni Antonio Canaletto, who depicted with uncanny verisimilitude, the piazzas and palazzi, churches and canals of his city. Canaletto was able to “capture” Venetian light – a glamor born of the interplay between sky and water. Although Piranesi worked exclusively in black and white, he, nevertheless, is a master of the effects of light in his masses of deep shadow and bold areas of full sun and in the unobtrusive yet deftly sketched movement of clouds in his skies.

His work also was influenced by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s picturesque jumble of architectural and sculptural elements, and Ferdinando Galli Bibiena’s scenographic presentations and theatrical designs.

Piranesi never aimed for a pure, idealized, harmonious classicism. Although in his mature work like Carceri d’Invenzione (imaginary prisons) the spaces, simultaneously vast and claustrophobic, the parts have been jumbled – stairs and drawbridges go nowhere, arches pile up to form inescapable labyrinths, heavy chains are swagged across gulfs of space. He portrays a macabre fantasy of space and suggests a descent into the subconscious. This is the Piranesi of the dark imagination that appealed to the fantasies of the Romantics and the psychological preoccupation of the Moderns.

After his death, his sons Francesco and Pietro and his daughter Laura moved to Paris, bringing all of their father’s original plates with them (1799). In Paris, his children continued the production of his prints.

This approach to image-making in its most fully developed form was chiefly felt in Britain, Germany and France. In a narrow sense, Romanticism came to an end when it morphed into Realism of the mid-19th century. In a broader sense it is still with us since it was the insistence on the rights of the imagination that led eventually to a genuinely modern art.

The development of Romanticism to European Modernism is exemplified by the prints of the other artists selected for this show. In this context, Modernism is defined as a “mode of expression,” or a “peculiarity of style,” a workmanship characteristic of modern times. Artists such as Goya, Whistler and Arms prefer to express themselves in terms of the thoughts and events of those of the past and tradition. Starting with Cézanne, the artists that followed: Renoir, Rouault and Gauguin, chose to create in terms of the thoughts and events of their own times.

European Modernism embodied the continual dialectical struggle between rationalism and intention, or between the particular and the symbolic. In the work of Toulouse-Lautrec, Léger, Braque, Chagall and Miró, the dramatic coexistence of contradictory tendencies is intelligible only if the mind can comprehend the possibility of a conjunction of opposites within a unified expression that is capable of embodying this theoretical conflict.

Pablo Picasso was an influential master who, besides participating in a characteristic movement of his own day, provided the impetus and inspiration for the distinctive trends that ensued. His work marks the real turning point toward European Modernism. From a romantic realist to Cubist, from Classicist to Surrealist, his encyclopedic nature can be fully appreciated through his personality and relation to his times.

Because of his stature as the indisputable genius of 20th century art, Picasso remains one of a handful of the most important artists in the history of Western art. When he first arrived in Paris (1900), he was influenced by Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Van Gogh. He rented a studio at the Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre. While there he met writers, artists and his early patrons, Gertrude and Leo Stein. He produced a remarkable series of etchings, The Frugal Repast, The Saltimbanques, and Salome, which showcased his extraordinary ability to assimilate varied influences and his uninhibited will to experiment. It also was at this time that Picasso painted his epoch-making Le Demoiselles d’Avignon which released him from conventional representation.

In 1930, his interest in classical mythology, combined with his passion for bullfights, resulted in his frequent use of the subject of the Minotaur. During 1931-35, he made a series of 100 etchings, the Vollard Suite (3 portraits of Vollard were made later in 1937). An additional etching, Minotauromachy (1935) was to be used 2 years later as the inspiration for his most historically important painting, Guernica. Examples in this exhibit from this Suite, as well as from his 347 Series (1968), provided a fine opportunity to become more intimately acquainted with his creative process.

Along with his painting and sculpture, Picasso was known as well for his prodigious volume of graphic work, which can be especially rewarding to study. Because of the medium’s ability to preserve the stages of decision making on separate sheets, and because of the distinctive look of different techniques combined to create dissonant effects, it exposes the artist’s thought process with particular lucidity. This sense that every moment may be pregnant with unforeseen possibilities is what makes Picasso the archetypal modern artist.

All of the artists represented in this show were extraordinarily versatile and inventive in every phase of their work in addition to being daring and innovative in style and technique. They all produced their most innovative work during the period from the end of the 19th century to the first quarter of the 20th, which has been referred to popularly as the birth of European Modernism. The fluidity of the boundaries between Romanticism and Modernism should be apparent in this show. Every culture sees its social and spiritual ideals mirrored in its art. Throughout history the concept of art has repeatedly undergone changes in meaning. Here is but a glimpse of this process.

What is a CVV Code?

CVV2 is a security measure for credit cards. Since a CVV2 number is listed on your credit card, but is not stored anywhere, the only way to know the correct CVV2 number for your credit card is to physically have possession of the card itself. All VISA, Discover, MasterCard and American Express cards made in America in the past 5 years or so have a CVV2 number. However Diners Club does not use a security code.

How to find your CVV2 number:
On a VISA, Discover or MasterCard, please turn your card over and look in the signature strip. You will find (either the entire 16-digit string of your card number, OR just the last 4 digits), followed by a space, followed by a 3-digit number. That 3-digit number is your CVV2 number.(See below)

VISA, Discover & MasterCard

On American Express Cards, the CVV2 number is a 4-digit number that appears above the end of your card number. (See below)